RIGA, Latvia — It was enough even for the normally unflappable European Union President Donald Tusk to start losing his cool. He stuttered, staggered his sentences, as he assessed what Russian President Vladimir Putin was doing to the EU’s brittle sense of unity.

“One of the most important goals for President Putin today is to divide Europe,” he said in off the cuff remarks to the European Parliament. He called it a key reason why he is “so obsessed about unity today.”

He’d better be. For EU unity has been in short supply here on the shores of the Baltic Sea, where Europe’s top diplomats gathered this week to forge a common strategy on the Ukraine crisis. When it comes to Russia, the 28-nation EU is roughly split in two. Several former Soviet bloc nations — including the three Baltic states and Tusk’s Poland — urge a tough line in the face of what they see as Russian aggression, while others like Germany and France are more careful to keep channels open.

At the same time, Putin has been wooing some nations like Hungary and Cyprus, making sure they can act as a thorn in the EU’s side.

Since foreign policy is set by unanimity between 28 nations, Tusk will find it tough to speak forcefully when he meets with U.S. President Barack Obama in Washington on Monday.

“Unity is a very good word. Everyone is for unity,” said Lithuanian Foreign Minister Linas Linkevicius, with biting sarcasm. “But you know, unity to do nothing is not for me, I don’t like it,” he said at the meeting of EU foreign ministers in Riga, which ended on Saturday.

Unity is a very good word. Everyone is for unity. But you know, unity to do nothing is not for me, I don’t like it

That’s exactly what U.S. House Speaker John Boehner and a group of top Democrats and Republicans sought to highlight in a letter to Obama on Thursday. In it, they complained that U.S. foreign policy on Ukraine and Russia was being “held hostage by the lowest common denominator of European consensus.”

EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini understands this all too well — since she has led several meetings with member states at loggerheads. “But we get out of the room with a common position,” she insisted, however difficult that may be. So far the EU has stuck together to impose economic sanctions on Russia and impose visa bans and asset freezes on 151 officials linked to the fighting in eastern Ukraine, including several Russians.

Sean Gallup/Getty European leaders link arms as they walk in a "March of Diginity" prior to ceremonies marking the first anniversary of the Ukrainian Maidan revolution on February 22, 2015 in Kiev, Ukraine.

But EU unity is fraying in places like Hungary, where Prime Minister Viktor Orban is under close scrutiny for his efforts to build an “illiberal state” partly based on Russia. He has waged a campaign to discredit civic groups, limit government transparency and weaken the democratic system of checks and balances.

Some critics have even called Orban “Little Putin” for the way he governs. Orban said after meeting with Putin last month in Hungary that he had reached a “political agreement” with Putin on a new gas deal, showing how Moscow continues to wield clout in eastern Europe because of its energy resources. Just inviting Putin to an EU nation was already an affront to many European partners.

But the move was mutually beneficial to Orban and Putin, said analyst Csaba Toth of the Republikon Institute in Budapest.

“It is also in Putin’s interest because there is now a state which represents a more moderate, more permissive position in the debates within the EU,” Toth said.

If Putin’s visit to Budapest made few happy in the EU, the same went for Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades’ four-day visit to Russia last week. There he signed a deal allowing Russian navy ships to make regular port calls in Cyprus, a Mediterranean island with great strategic interest. Anastasiades also proclaimed Cyprus to be Russia’s “most credible voice” within the 28-member bloc.

It made even Washington stand up and notice.

“We’ve been clear this is not the time for business as usual with Russia and have stressed with our European allies and partners the importance of unity,” said U.S. State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf. “That’s certainly something we feel very strongly about.”

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/news/world/european-union-diplomacy/feed/2stdBELGIUM-EU-SUMMITSean Gallup/Getty Robert Fulford: Erdogan is turning his country into an Islam-tilted dictatorshiphttp://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/robert-fulford-erdogan-is-turning-his-country-into-an-islam-tilted-dictatorship
http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/robert-fulford-erdogan-is-turning-his-country-into-an-islam-tilted-dictatorship#commentsFri, 06 Mar 2015 17:55:49 +0000http://news.nationalpost.com/?p=713895

A decade ago Turkey was the shining hope of optimists in the West, one state in the Middle East fulfilling its promise. The policies of modern Turkey’s founder, Kemal Atatürk, were still in place. In 2004 George W. Bush praised Turkey as proof that a Muslim country can embrace democracy and the rule of law. Bush’s secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, claimed in 2007 that Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) was pulling Turkey towards Europe.

The optimists, alas, were poor prophets. Turkey has since been relentlessly moving backward, tearing down what Atatürk created in the 1920s when he separated religion from government, made public education secular and urged women to play a role equal to men’s.

Rather than a secular democracy, Erdogan is turning his country into an Islam-tilted dictatorship. Eight years ago, 300,000 secularist Turks waved banners showing Atatürk’s picture as they demonstrated against Erdogan’s increasingly Islamic agenda. Nevertheless, Erdogan has remained popular. Through three successive elections since 2003 he’s won the prime minister’s job. He’s since been elected president.

Perhaps as a way of justifying his own sense of grandeur, he has tried to teach Turks to revere the achievements of the Ottoman Empire and its six centuries of rule, which ended in 1922. “We were born and raised on the land that is the legacy of the Ottoman Empire,” he likes to say. For a while, his Ottoman-like ambitions seemed to be making Turkey dominant in the region. Ahmet Davutoglu, now Erdogan’s chosen successor as prime minister, said when he was foreign minister that Turkey was becoming “master, leader and servant” of the Middle East.

In the course of renewing the low-ranked education system, Erdogan has directed schools to teach the old Ottoman version of Turkish, written in Arabic script. Since it was Atatürk who brought in the Latin alphabet, that’s another rejection of Atatürk modernity. With that earlier decision, Erdogan says, “Our jugular vein was ripped.”

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Erdogan wants classes in Islam for first-graders who are Muslim. He expects that the education department will rewrite history textbooks, giving an account of the Atatürk era reflecting Erdogan’s views. A dedicated Muslim, he reassures educators by saying “We are members of a religion whose first order is learning.”

He’s a prickly leader, quick to take offence. But he also sees himself as the fatherly guide to 21st-century Turks. In 2013 his government put through a law banning alcohol in public places between 10 p..m and 6 a.m. He explained he hoped to save new generations “from such un-Islamic habits.” Davutoglu has called for restoring “ancient values” that were lost when a modern identity was “thrust upon us.”

Having moved from prime minister to president, Erdogan expects to win another election and use his victory to put through constitutional changes that will increase his power. Manoeuvring frantically during the past year, he’s skated around corruption charges levelled against four members of his inner circle.

He managed to persuade parliament that the charges were a fiction devised as propaganda in an attempted coup against the government. The coup, he claimed, was the work of his once close friend and now enemy, Fethullah Gülen, a former imam who left Turkey in 1999 and now lives in Pennsylvania. A renowned orator and opinion leader, Gülen has followers in many countries. While he’s considered a religious conservative, he claims to believe in multi-party democracy and dialogue with Christians and Jews. Gülen went abroad because the government prosecuted him for what Erdogan considered treasonous remarks about Turkey. Gülen was also accused of establishing a terrorist group. While he denies plotting, he acknowledges that under the present regime democratic progress has been reversed.

When defending against the ostensible coup, Erdogan’s government arrested 27 journalists and political opponents — “We’re pursuing treachery,” he said. The arrests attracted a rebuke from Nils Muiznieks, the human rights officer of the European Union, and may have set back Turkey’s long-delayed plans to join the EU. “Such measures carry a high risk of cancelling out the progress Turkey has painstakingly achieved in recent years,” Muiznieks commented. Erdogan said this issue was none of the EU’s business.

But the government has a problem far more pressing than religion or the EU. A change in interest rates led to a sell off of the Turkish lira, which this week fell to a record low against the U.S. dollar. Increased prices for consumers will test Erdogan’s popularity. To stay in power he may need to imagine another coup.

National Post

robert.fulford@utoronto.ca

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/robert-fulford-erdogan-is-turning-his-country-into-an-islam-tilted-dictatorship/feed/1stdTurkey_Insulting_The_PresidentfbMugabe marks 91st birthday with supporters saying they will back him for full term until 2018http://news.nationalpost.com/news/world/mugabe-marks-91st-birthday-with-supporters-saying-they-will-back-him-for-full-term-until-2018
http://news.nationalpost.com/news/world/mugabe-marks-91st-birthday-with-supporters-saying-they-will-back-him-for-full-term-until-2018#commentsSat, 21 Feb 2015 15:06:47 +0000http://news.nationalpost.com/?p=704020

HARARE, Zimbabwe — Zimbabwe’s president Robert Mugabe turns 91 on Saturday, with his supporters saying they will back him to run his full term until 2018 and beyond despite nagging questions about his health and an economy that is crumbling under his watch.

Mugabe’s recent fall at Harare Airport fuelled renewed speculation that old age is catching up with the man who has led Zimbabwe since independence in 1980. The spry Mugabe, however, succeeded in breaking his fall and apparently was not injured. His officials say he is in good health.

In addition to being in power in Zimbabwe, this year Mugabe is also chairman of the 54-nation African Union and the 15-nation Southern African Development Community.

Low key events marked Saturday’s birthday but lavish celebrations are planned next Saturday (Feb. 28) in the resort town of Victoria Falls. Those celebrations will be held by the 21st February Movement, the group that has planned Mugabe’s birthday celebrations since 1986. Members of Mugabe’s ruling paty, ZANU-PF, say they are raising more than $1 million for the festivities.

The celebrations are leaving a sour taste in the mouth for some Zimbabweans battling to survive under economic deterioration that has led to company closures, massive unemployment and successive food shortages.

Zimbabwe’s once prosperous economy took a severe knock in 2000 when Mugabe began seizing white-owned farms. Allegations of vote-rigging and violence in elections that year brought the United States and the European Union to impose travel and financial sanctions on Mugabe, his inner circle and some state institutions and firms.

An empowerment law forcing foreigners to sell at least 51 percent of their shareholding to government-approved black Zimbabweans has scared investors, said economist John Robertson. Mugabe’s “Look East” policy encouraging Chinese investment has failed to stabilize the economy, he said.

“The celebrations show what has gone wrong in this country. Only those close to Mugabe feast while the rest of us starve. Look around, everyone is now a vendor,” said John Ratambwa, an unemployed 23-year old Harare resident. “At 91 one has to rest. Ninety-one years is too old an age to lead a vast country like Zimbabwe,” he said in downtown Harare, whose sidewalks now teem with people selling wares.

The African Development Bank says 65 percent of Zimbabweans now rely on the informal sector for survival due to the decline in industry. Mugabe’s government in the past year has struggled to pay its workers.

Mugabe won disputed elections in 2013 and his supporters say they want him to contest the 2018 elections at 94.

Nelson Chamisa, an opposition legislator, said Mugabe should hand over the baton. “I would equate what ZANU-PF is doing to abuse of the elderly,” he said. “He needs to rest. Even our constitution stipulates that we have an oblation to take care of our elderly. Look at what happened at the airport, a very embarrassing situation.”

Mugabe’s wife Grace, 42 years his junior, has recently become prominent in Zimbabwe’s politics. At this week’s ZANU-PF politburo meeting she sat next to Mugabe in the seat previously taken by ousted vice president Joice Mujuru. Grace Mugabe is secretary for women’s affairs in the politburo.

Didymus Mutasa, who worked with Mugabe since the 1960s until he was fired from his presidential ministerial position last year and from the party this week for allegedly plotting to oust Mugabe, said Grace is now the power behind the throne.

“Grace has effectively taken over,” he said. “Power now revolves around her and this is sad because she is inexperienced and will cause more damage.”

Supa Mandiwanzira, the minister for Information and Communications Technology, said Mugabe is still in charge.

“I sit in cabinet every Tuesday with the president, he is totally, fully in charge,” he said, dismissing criticism of Mugabe’s birthday festivities.

“The celebrations are worth every cent. This is an icon we are talking about,” said Mandiwanzira. “He is pushing for the empowerment of blacks through the land reform program and the indigenization policy.”

How much does it matter, if at all, that Greece’s demand for a new bailout program with softer terms is being pressed by a new government, elected for that very purpose — a government that retains solid support even as its standoff with other European Union governments drags on? How much does democracy matter in a situation like this?

In a column for Project Syndicate earlier this month, Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel laureate and professor of economics at Columbia, said it mattered a lot:

“If Europe says no to Greek voters’ demand for a change of course, it is saying that democracy is of no importance, at least when it comes to economics.”

The Economistdisagreed. Greek voters may want debt restructuring and fiscal relaxation, it said — but what about voters in Germany and the rest of the euro area? Their opinions count too, and there are more of them. If democracy matters, maybe majority opinion across the EU ought to decide. Jacob Funk Kirkegaard of the Peterson Institute agreed and went further. Pooling of economic sovereignty within the euro area isn’t consistent with the notion of an overriding national mandate:

“It is unrealistic for Greece to claim that its voters trump voters in other countries. Indeed, inside a currency union where no member is fully sovereign, it is inherently impossible for any newly elected government to claim that their new electoral mandate trumps everything else.”

The German government has shown scant regard for Greek citizens.

One more thing: Plain facts (as opposed to political choices) don’t lend themselves to adjudication by popular vote. The mathematical requirements of national solvency, for instance, can’t be repealed because voters don’t like them. Voting that the moon is made of cheese won’t make it so.

All these objections to what Stiglitz said are correct. The rest of the euro area is within its rights to say no to Greece, and that wouldn’t constitute a repudiation of democratic principles. Even so, a crucial point is being missed: A minimum requirement for a well-functioning democracy is that its leaders respect the people they represent.

Suppose for the moment that Greece’s demands are unreasonable or impossible to grant, so that it does make sense for the other countries to say no. In that case, the manner of the refusal would still matter. A well-founded rejection would indeed be a repudiation of democratic principles if it expressed contempt for Greek voters. And that is what we’ve witnessed.

Europe’s collective response to Greece’s terrible economic plight has been unsympathetic, even punitive.

The German government has shown scant regard for Greek citizens. But isn’t the other side of pooling of sovereignty that Germany’s leaders should have a duty of care and respect to non-Germans? Countries that are uncomfortable with that requirement should perhaps have thought twice about building — then vastly expanding — the EU in the first place.

Electorates all over the EU are fed up with the union’s developing system of governance. Fixing that will be difficult, and may require strengthening the lines of accountability that run from national governments to their respective national voters. Nonetheless, in a well-run EU, governments acting in concert would strive to represent the collective interests of all the members’ citizens. Otherwise, what’s the point?

Europe’s collective response to Greece’s terrible economic plight has been unsympathetic, even punitive. Dismissing the protests of Greek voters out of hand — the prevailing sentiment of late — undermines the solidarity that the union must have to survive and prosper.

Greece’s proposals, as it happens, are mostly reasonable. Acceding to most of them would actually serve Europe’s broader economic interests. But even if that weren’t the case, and Germany and its supporters were right not to budge, their refusal should be cleansed of disdain for a nation that’s already suffered inordinately and is being asked to suffer some more.

The Greek election did matter. Conveying the impression that it didn’t was a gross misjudgment.

A prediction for you: Greece and the European Union will split the difference in their quarrel over debt relief. What’s uncertain is how their respective governments will justify the new deal, and how much damage they’ll inflict on each other before accepting the inevitable.

EU governments, with Germany in the lead, are saying that debt writedowns are out of the question. Debts are debts. Greece’s newly elected leader, Alexis Tsipras, calls the current settlement “fiscal waterboarding” and says his country faces a humanitarian crisis. His government won’t pay and wants much of the debt written off. Neither side is willing to give way.

What surprises me is that this all-or-nothing positioning takes anybody in.

Debts are debts? Please. Europe’s governments have already provided debt relief to Greece. (In that process, private creditors saw their loans written down; most of what remains is owed to governments.) However, the plan hasn’t worked. Greece’s fiscal position was so bad that the haircuts, reschedulings and interest-rate concessions weren’t sufficient to restore its creditworthiness. At the same time, thanks to slower-than- expected growth, the fiscal conditions tied to the settlement proved harsher than intended. Greek voters have just repudiated those terms.

Matt Cardy/Getty ImagesSupporters cheer election result: Expulsion from the Euro would be a catastrophe.

In other words, the existing settlement has failed. It therefore needs to be revised. No conceptual revolution is required. This conclusion follows from the same kind of analysis that EU governments have already relied on.

For sure, granting additional debt relief has drawbacks — just as there were drawbacks to granting debt relief in the first place. It sends a bad message; it encourages bad behavior in future; it will inflame resentment among voters in other EU countries. That’s why it’s a good idea, so far as possible, to make relief conditional on efforts to behave responsibly. But the likely consequences of any EU refusal to budge are much worse.

There’s a serious risk that Greece will default unilaterally. This would not be in Greece’s interests, but it’s too close a call for comfort. The existing settlement will require the government to run primary budget surpluses (that is, excluding interest payments) in the neighborhood of 4 percent of gross domestic product. That means that if Greece defaulted, it could cut taxes or raise public spending substantially without needing to borrow.

In the end, the EU won’t offer nothing

The downside of default would be huge — possible ejection from the euro system. That would be a calamity for Greece and, because of the risk of contagion, for the rest of the euro area as well. Nonetheless, if the EU offers Tsipras nothing, that’s how things could turn out.

Therefore, in the end, the EU won’t offer nothing. But the posturing on both sides needs to stop and discussions of a possible compromise need to start quickly, or Tsipras and the EU could talk themselves into the worst-case scenario they both want to avoid.

A new compromise on Greek debt is the best feasible outcome not just for Greece

Outright debt forgiveness would be hard for Europe’s leaders to sell to their own voters; like Tsipras, they’ve boxed themselves in. However, they can provide debt relief in many other ways. “Extend and pretend,” as it’s called, is relief by another name. Maturities could be stretched further. Debt- service costs could be cut again with concessionary interest rates, perhaps including a moratorium on payments. The creditors could tie debt service to Greece’s growth rate — the stronger its economy, the more it pays. Tsipras has already broached this last possibility.

The EU should also agree to modify Greece’s supervised austerity program. Some of the projected primary surplus should be given back to Greek voters in the form of social spending.

Now that Tsipras has won his election, he needs to be less of a populist demagogue and more of a pragmatic leader. He should recognize the need for further structural economic reforms, and offer commitments in exchange for debt relief. As Reza Moghadam, former head of the International Monetary Fund’s Europe department, notes in a column for the Financial Times, Syriza is an anti-establishment party. Despite its hard-left policy platform, it could be more open than its predecessors to breaking the grip of entrenched interests. Its election success can’t be undone in any event. It’s an opportunity worth exploring.

Does Greece deserve this new dispensation? It’s a fair question, but there’s no straightforward answer and it’s largely beside the point. A new compromise on Greek debt is the best feasible outcome not just for Greece but also, in view of the risks, for Germany and the other EU countries. They just need to get on with it.

Some 10 million Greek voters went to the polls Sunday, in an election with big implications for the future of monetary union. Even if Greece stays in the single currency, after choosing a party determined to defy the European Central Bank, negotiations over bond repayments between Athens and Frankfurt will be extremely hard-fought.

The forthcoming rhetorical slugfest, whatever the outcome, will have ripple effects across other “peripheral” members of the 19-country currency bloc which could send global bond markets haywire.

This Hellenic election holds big significance for Britain, too. Ahead of the U.K.’s general election in May 2015, fears of renewed eurozone turmoil, which this Greek vote could spark, will bolster Eurosceptics across all parties. That could lead to an earlier vote on U.K. European Union membership.

Whatever the political impact in the U.K., there’s also the enduring economic reality. Continental Europe remains its largest trading partner by far and, in the EU or not, that won’t change any time soon. As such, Britain can’t stage a full-throated recovery while the eurozone is flirting with systemic meltdown – a meltdown that is now more likely, after this Greek election.

It is almost certain that the next Greek prime minister will be Alexis Tsipras, leader of the radical-left Syriza party, having won with early polls suggesting a comfortable victory. The charismatic Tsipras has campaigned relentlessly to renegotiate the €350 billion ($485.26 billion) debt mountain that Athens owes the ECB, the International Monetary Fund, other European governments and private investors.

LOUISA GOULIAMAKI/AFP/Getty ImagesA youth holds aloft the party flag as anti-austerity Syriza supporters celebrate after the first exit polls, as they gather at the Syriza election kiosk in Athens Sunday.

Greece is €30 billion in debt to the ECB, after the eurozone’s central bank bought Greek bonds back in 2010 and 2011, during previous eurozone turmoil. Initial payments are due in just a few months – and it is these terms, in particular, which Syriza will insist are eased. Having launched its controversial quantitative easing program last week, which will flood the eurozone with €1,100 billion of newly-created money, the ECB must now deal with Greece. Those two facts aren’t unrelated. The U.K., like Germany, has ostensibly recovered from the late-2008 Lehman collapse. Real GDP in both countries is back above pre-crisis levels. In Greece, though, inflation-adjusted national income remains over 25 per cent adrift, this small but intensely proud country having endured a downturn as deep as the great depression of the Thirties.

That explains the success of Syriza – which vows to raise wages and pensions, while rejecting creditors’ “austerity” measures and securing a 50 per cent cut in Greek sovereign debt. So Tsipras is now on a direct collision course with more prudent nations bankrolling Greece – such as Finland, the Netherlands and, above all, Germany, the eurozone’s paymaster-in-chief.

Two huge bail-outs in 2010 and 2012 kept Athens afloat, and the eurozone intact, but the conditions imposed on Greece were tough. That’s why an “anti-establishment” party barely a decade old just smashed New Democracy, long the main player on the Greek centre-right.

We can now expect an extremely muscular discussion between Athens and its main creditors, not least the ECB and IMF. Syriza will scream it has a democratic mandate to reverse austerity measures imposed by foreigners. So unless we see tangible, bankable changes in Greek credit terms, politics could quickly become even more explosive. We could easily see the kind of civil unrest Greece endured during earlier debt negotiations.

Matt Cardy/Getty ImagesSupporters cheer as the head of radical leftist party Alexis Tsipras speaks after winning the election Sunday in Athens, Greece.

Eurozone creditors, though, not least Germany, will be loath to accept Tsipras’ demands, not only due to domestic political opprobrium but also the prospect of anti-austerity parties in other “periphery” states then storming to power on now-more-believable pledges to secure renegotiated bail-outs.

The stakes are so high, then, that both sides – Greece and its creditors – will be forced to threaten a Greek euro-exit in the bargaining, squabbling and outright mud-slinging which will now ensue, even if that’s not what either side truly wants. That’s going to batter the credit rating not just of Greece, but also of other weaker eurozone members. The knock-on effects, given the vast, inter-connected debt holdings of European governments and the region’s still shaky banking sector, could be ghastly. Even if Syriza does negotiate responsibly, and a relatively speedy and civilized deal is done, other members enduring EU-IMF austerity programs will still demand less onerous terms. Why wouldn’t they?

So fears will grow that Europe is in for a succession of crises, as the impact of caving in to the pleas of one profligate debtor spreads elsewhere.

In the coming days, Greece will host victory marches and see rhetorical chest-thumping. Once that’s over, vital debt negotiations – the success of which will determine whether we avoid a significant crisis on global markets in 2015 – will quickly fall into obscurantism, all the better to keep the details away from the mainstream media and concoct a political fudge.

AP Photo/Lefteris PitarakisSupporters of Alexis Tsipras leader of Syriza left-wing party gather during a rally outside Athens University Headquarters, Sunday.

One possible outcome is the use of “variated zero-coupon perpetuals” – bonds that pay nothing and aren’t repaid, at least not until Greece’s debt-to-GDP ratio falls way below its current 180 per cent. Another face-saving way of letting Athens off the hook is to use “GDP warrants” – link debt-service to Greece reaching a certain growth rate.

Whatever happens, the prospect of Euro-QE will help soothe fears Greece could spark a bond market meltdown – for now. Yet elections are due in Italy, the real GDP of which remains 10 per cent down on 2008, the country trapped in a high-currency straitjacket. Italy’s three main opposition parties, all campaigning on an anti-euro platform, will revel in Syriza’s success.

Spain and Portugal will also hold elections in 2015, with anti-euro parties set to make significant gains. Marine Le Pen’s Front National is also anti-euro, so even France could be brought into the euro-exit mix.

Throughout 2015, then, we’ll see further Greek-style tests for the “European project,” as the rubber that is monetary union hits the road – the hard legitimacy of democratic mandate, the disgruntled voters, across a range of nations, for whom the single currency isn’t working. Will all such problems be hosed down with printed money? If so, where does it end?

Former House of Commons sergeant-at-arms Kevin Vickers presented his credentials to Ireland’s president Wednesday, the beginning of his new role as Canada’s ambassador to that country.

Vickers met with Irish head of state Michael Higgins at his official residence in Dublin to present his diplomatic accreditation, a formality that kicks off his term as ambassador. Vickers was accompanied by new ambassadors for Armenia and Bolivia.

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Vickers also met Irish Foreign Minister Charlie Flanagan to discuss trade, as negotiations continue for a trade agreement between Canada and the European Union, which includes Ireland.

“In our first meeting, we discussed the great potential for further developing Ireland’s relations with Canada and building on our already strong business, political and cultural links,” Flanagan said in a news release.

Vickers, 58, became the House of Commons’ top security officer in 2006 after 29 years as an RCMP officer. He was loudly applauded in the Commons for his role in stopping Oct. 22 gunman Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, but has repeatedly stressed it was a co-ordinated response by many people.

House Speaker Andrew Scheer said this month that Vickers’ deputy sergeant-at-arms, Pat McDonell, will hold all ceremonial functions on an interim basis. Scheer’s office said Wednesday all managerial reports that normally go to the sergeant-at-arms will temporarily now be received by acting clerk Marc Bosc.

In Ireland, Vickers replaces Loyola Hearn, who served as Canadian ambassador from January 2011 to 2014. The role covers the Republic of Ireland, but not Northern Ireland, which is part of the United Kingdom.

These words, shouted by an elderly woman, were made famous in a medical alert device ad in the 1990s. In 2015, they might be Europe’s catchphrase.

As the United States economy slowly recovers, analysts across the political spectrum see little to cheer them from Europe. The optimists see the region’s economy growing by just 1% in 2015; many others fear that a triple-dip recession is in the offing. Germany is widely viewed as a healthy country whose prosperity helps compensate for Europe’s weakness, yet over the past two quarters for which we have data, it has experienced no net growth at all. Predictions of decade-long deflation, low productivity and high unemployment are becoming conventional wisdom.

What does the Continent need? Most economists and pundits focus on monetary and fiscal policy, as well as labour-market reform. Get the policy levers and economic incentives right, and the Continent might escape the vortex of decline, right?

Probably not. As important as good economic policies are, they will not fix Europe’s core problems, which are demographic, not economic. This was the point made in a speech to the European Parliament in November by none other than Pope Francis. As the pontiff put it, “In many quarters we encounter a general impression of weariness and aging, of a Europe which is now a ‘grandmother,’ no longer fertile and vibrant.”

But wait, it gets worse: Grandma Europe is not merely growing old. She is also getting dotty. She is, as the pope sadly explained in an earlier speech to a conference of bishops, “weary with disorientation.”

Some readers might regret the pope’s use of language — we love our grandmothers, weary with disorientation or not. But as my American Enterprise Institute colleague Nicholas Eberstadt shows in his research, the pope’s analysis is fundamentally sound.

Start with age. According to the United States Census Bureau’s International Database, nearly one in five Western Europeans was 65 years old or older in 2014. This is hard enough to endure, given the countries’ early retirement ages and pay-as-you-go pension systems. But by 2030, this will have risen to one in four. If history is any guide, aging electorates will direct larger and larger portions of gross domestic product to retirement benefits — and invest less in opportunity for future generations.

Next, look at fertility. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the last time the countries of the European Union were reproducing at replacement levels (that is, slightly more than two children per woman) was the mid-1970s. In 2014, the average number of children per woman was about 1.6. That’s up a hair from the nadir in 2001, but has been falling again for more than half a decade. Imagine a world where many people have no sisters, brothers, cousins, aunts or uncles. That’s where Europe is heading in the coming decades. On the bright side, at least there will be fewer Christmas presents to buy.

There are some exceptions. France has risen to exactly two children per woman in 2012, from 1.95 in 1980, an increase largely attributed to a system of government payments to parents, not a change in the culture of family life. Is there anything more dystopian than the notion that population decline can be slowed only when states bribe their citizens to reproduce?

Finally, consider employment. Last September, the United States’ labour force participation rate — the percentage of adults who are either working or looking for work — reached a 36-year low of just 62.7%.

Yet as bad as that is, the United States looks decent compared with most of Europe. Our friends across the Atlantic like to say that we live to work, while they work to live. That might be compelling if more of them were actually working. According to the most recent data available from the World Bank, the labour force participation rate in the European Union in 2013 was 57.5%. In France it was 55.9%. In Italy, just 49.1%.

One bright spot might seem to be immigration. In 2012, the median age of the national population in the European Union was 41.9 years, while the median age of foreigners living in the union was 34.7. So, are Europeans pleased that there will be new arrivals to work and pay taxes when the locals retire?

Not exactly. Anti-immigrant sentiment is surging across the Continent. Nativist movements performed alarmingly well in European Parliament elections last year. Europe is less like a grandmother knitting placidly in the window and more like an angry grandfather, shaking his rake and yelling at outsiders to get off his lawn.

None of this should give Americans cause for schadenfreude. At a purely practical level, a European market in further decline will suppress American growth. But more important, European deterioration will dissipate the vast good the Continent can do in spreading the values of democracy and freedom around the world.

So what is the prescription for Europe’s ills — and the lesson for America’s future?

It is true that good monetary and fiscal policies are important. But the deeper problems in Europe will not be solved by the European Central Bank. No matter what the money supply and public spending levels, a country or continent will be in decline if it rejects the culture of family, turns its back on work, and closes itself to strivers from the outside.

Europe needs visionary leaders and a social movement to rediscover that people are assets to develop, not liabilities to manage. If it cannot or will not meet this existential challenge, a “lost decade” will look like a walk in the park for Grandma Europe.

The New York Times

Arthur C. Brooks is the president of the American Enterprise Institute.

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/arthur-c-brooks-only-babies-can-save-europe/feed/0stdlittle child babyProspect of a 'Grexit' could have implications for more than just Greecehttp://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/prospect-of-a-grexit-has-implications-for-more-than-just-greece
http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/prospect-of-a-grexit-has-implications-for-more-than-just-greece#commentsWed, 31 Dec 2014 12:00:42 +0000http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/?p=172279

Full Comment’s Araminta Wordsworth brings you a daily round-up of quality punditry from across the globe. Today: With no end in sight to the years of belt-tightening, Greeks are understandably fed up.

Ordinary people have seen few of the improvements promised by the country’s lenders, who enforced job cuts and tax hikes as conditions of the bailout. Greece was supposed to return to growth by 2012, with unemployment topping out at 15%.

Instead, Greeks are enduring the kind of poverty and deprivation seen in the United States during the Great Depression, with people rooting through trash for food. Joblessness has soared to more than 25%; suicides are on the increase; while many of those who do have work must beg and wait to be paid.

Against this background, the news of snap elections called for Jan. 25 has galvanized voters. They feel they have nothing to lose by rejecting the reforms imposed by Brussels and Berlin. And damn the consequences

Front-runner is the left-wing Syriza Party headed by the charismatic Alexis Tsipras, who has made no secret of his plan to revisit the bailout agreement. He may even leave the eurozone, the “Grexit.”

Predictably, there have been dire warnings from Germany. Finance Minister WolfgangSchaeuble said Greece must stick to agreed economic reforms, regardless.

In an op-ed piece in the Avgi newspaper on the weekend, Tsipras laid out his program:

Syriza’s victory will be the start of a great national effort to save society and restore Greece – a national effort with international repercussions, since our historical responsibility is to pave the way for an alternative policy in Europe, turning a eurozone country from a neoliberal experiment to a model of social protection and growth.

Note the implied commitment to the eurozone. It’s real. Tsipras doesn’t want to take Greece back the drachma, but he views the nation’s $240-billion in public debt to its “troika” of lenders — the European Commission, the European Central Bank, and the International Monetary Fund — as unsustainable …

Under a Syriza government, hence, Greece would turn on a dime. And in short order, so would Europe … Emphatically populist, Tsipras displays little concern for the fate of bankers or industrialists, although he is now trying to calm bondholders.

In an editorial, The Guardian asks how can Brussels and Berlin go on demanding the implementation of policies that have been passionately rejected by voters in member countries.

The political forces set in motion by austerity policies designed to cope with the still unresolved economic crisis are coming to the fore everywhere, undermining established parties, changing the way countries are governed, and reshaping popular attitudes. [If Syriza wins,] it will perhaps go down as the first true anti-austerity, as well as unashamedly anti-capitalist, party to come to office in Europe after 2008 changed the rules of the game …

The question a Syriza victory could raise is whether a specifically anti-austerity party in a small country can force a change in an economic strategy for the whole eurozone that has been largely crafted by Germany, and which that nation has until now shown little readiness to change.

At The New York Times, Neil Irwin says this time around, financial markets view Greece’s problem as important to Greece alone. But what if they are wrong?

The same political forces that appear poised to bring an extreme leftist party to power in Greece are bubbling in other parts of Europe.

The European Central Bank’s program to backstop European governments has never been tested in practice, and mainstream parties in Spain, France and Italy are facing challenges to their authority as the economy grinds along on the cusp of recession year after year. Germany’s antipathy toward some of the reforms that might help correct the imbalances at the root of the weak economy, like much easier monetary policy or fiscal transfers from stronger economies to weaker ones, is as strong as ever.

The risk is no longer that Greece’s problems will infect the rest of Europe. It is that the same dynamics of political economy causing unrest in Greece will soon enough arise in its bigger neighbours.

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/prospect-of-a-grexit-has-implications-for-more-than-just-greece/feed/0std536405048Michael Byers: Canada’s make-believe sanctions against Russia have deprived it a role at the negotiating tablehttp://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/michael-byers-canadas-make-believe-sanctions-against-russia-have-deprived-it-a-role-at-the-negotiating-table
http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/michael-byers-canadas-make-believe-sanctions-against-russia-have-deprived-it-a-role-at-the-negotiating-table#commentsTue, 23 Dec 2014 11:30:59 +0000http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/?p=171898

In 1787, Grigory Potemkin ordered fake villages built along the banks of the Dnieper River to impress Russian empress Katharine the Great. The ploy worked, and the term “Potemkin Village” entered the lexicon, meaning an artifice designed to deceive.

Vladimir Putin, who knows his Russian history, can see that Prime Minister Stephen Harper is using the same ruse today.

The Harper Government has repeatedly condemned Putin’s actions in Ukraine. But despite an expanded set of sanctions adopted last week, three of the Russian President’s most powerful allies remain exempted from Canada’s sanctions regime.

Igor Sechin has been by Putin’s side since 1994, when Putin was the deputy mayor of St. Petersburg and Sechin was his chief of staff. Sechin is currently the CEO of Rosneft, Russia’s massive state-owned oil company.

Sechin has been on the United States’ and the European Union’s sanctions lists since March, and in September, his company was also added to those lists, making it illegal for American or European companies to do business or share technologies with it. The impact on Exxon Mobil was particularly onerous, with the U.S.-based company being forced to suspend a joint venture with Rosneft to develop offshore oil in the Russian Arctic.

However, neither Sechin nor Rosneft are included in Canada’s sanctions. This might be because Rosneft owns a 30% share of an Exxon Mobil shale-oil field in Alberta, where — according to a report from Reuters — the Russian company “is learning the horizontal drilling and fracturing techniques that have revolutionized the North American oil industry.”

Sergei Chemezov and Putin have been friends since the 1980s, when they were KGB agents in East Germany. Chemezov is currently the CEO of Rostec, Russia’s state-owned arms, aviation, biotech and engineering company.

Although Chemezov and Rostec are both on the U.S. and EU sanctions lists, they are not on the Canadian one. This omission might be associated with Montreal-based Bombardier’s plans for a joint venture with Rostec, whereby hundreds of Q400 commuter airplanes would be assembled in Russia. That plan was recently suspended, after the U.S. and EU sanctions denied Rostec access to financing.

Vladimir Yakunin has been part of Putin’s inner circle for 25 years. As the president of state-owned Russian Railways, he controls the movement of people and resources across the world’s largest country.

Related

Yakunin too is subject to U.S. and EU sanctions but not Canadian ones. This omission might be related to a joint venture between Russian Railways and Bombardier that builds train-signalling equipment. Or it might be connected to Russian Railways being a potential purchaser of Bombardier rolling stock.

In May, Reuters asked an unnamed Canadian official about the decision to exclude Putin’s most powerful allies from sanctions. The official replied: “Our goal is to sanction Russia, it is not to go out of our way to sanction or penalize Canadian companies.”

As a result, the Canadian sanctions list is made up of Russian officials, companies and technologies that play only insignificant roles in the Canadian economy. But when it comes to sanctions, there can be no gain without pain. Sanctions will be ineffective unless they target significant economic relations — relations that provide real benefits to both sides.

As Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in October before a meeting with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry: “We do not know who is losing out more in economic terms: Russia or the European Union.”

Yet the U.S. and EU sanctions are what brought the Russians to the negotiating table. Lavrov and Kerry met again just last week. Canada’s make-believe sanctions have deprived it of any role in those talks. Russians, no strangers to deception, can recognize a Potemkin village easily enough.

National Post

Michael Byers holds the Canada Research Chair in Global Politics and International Law at the University of British Columbia.

Full Comment’s Araminta Wordsworth brings you a daily round-up of quality punditry from across the globe. Today: Today: He’s back — Nicolas Sarkozy has taken his first serious steps toward a return to the Elysée.

No matter he remains the most hated person in French politics, uniting both left and right in visceral dislike.

The former French president won the leadership vote for his Union pour un mouvement populaire (UMP) on the weekend. Now, pundits believe he is on track to become the party’s challenger in the 2017 elections. But it won’t be a shoo-in although no one believes François Hollande, the Socialist incumbent, has a snowball’s chance in hell.

That’s because the candidate to beat will be Marine Le Pen of the far-right Front National. Under her stewardship the former fringe party has become a serious political force, with polls indicating more than 50% of French would vote for her. This is despite suspicions about the party’s links with Russia, all part of an increasing web of connections and funding between the Kremlin and far-right and Europhobic parties in the European Union.

French politics, never a happy place at the best of times, takes on a special hysteria when Nicolas Sarkozy appears … the man some call the “elevator-shoed poison dwarf of Europe” provokes blinding rage in his critics. [His] return has been likened to the spread of Ebola and the Ten Plagues …

But, in the end, the anti-Sarko frenzy may serve him well with the French: it has already given him the stature of an outsider, fighting the establishment on all fronts – no mean feat when you’ve already been president of the French Republic for a full mandate — and neatly stealing Marine Le Pen’s USP [unique selling point].

In a blog posting, Gideon Rachman of the London-based Financial Times looks at recent opinion polls in assessing the former president’s chances.

[One] suggested that Ms. Le Pen could win the first round of the 2017 presidential election with 30% of the vote. That would be a historic breakthrough for a party that has always struggled to break through the 20% barrier in national polls.

The polls also suggest that Ms. Le Pen would then lose in a second-round contest with Mr. Sarkozy – although with a startlingly high score of 40%. Those who argue that it is still impossible to imagine France electing a far-right president should also note that the same IFOP poll in September, showed that Ms. Le Pen would win a clear victory over President Hollande – if he were her opponent in the second round. I think the real significance of that is it suggests that over half the French electorate can now imagine themselves voting for the National Front, which is a really striking political and psychological breakthrough.

The Independent’s John Lichfield says Sarko’s win was actually a disappointment. The big winner was his rival, Alain Juppé, who wasn’t running.

Mr. Sarkozy had counted on returning to fervent acclamation, like Napoleon after he escaped from Elba in 1815. He took 64.5% of the vote in an online poll but this was almost universally interpreted on Sunday as a reverse – like getting two cheers instead of three. [He got 85% last time he ran for the post].

And there was more bad news. A devastating opinion poll by IFOP for the Journal du Dimanche suggested that only 16% of French voters thought that Mr. Sarkozy provided a “serious” answer to the nation’s problems. Just 10% regarded him as “honest” and 18% as “likeable.” The tangle of 12 different ongoing criminal investigations surrounding Mr. Sarkozy’s finances have evidently taken their toll.

In an unsigned opinion piece The Wall Street Journal says Sarkozy is taking a leaf from Le Pen’s book, in vowing to stem the flow of immigrants and rein in the bureaucrats in Brussels. But this may be beside the point when like Hollande he fails to tackle tougher issues, like the sclerotic French economy.

By talking tough on the European Union, Mr. Sarkozy hopes to keep the support of voters frustrated by a stagnating economy and tempted to back Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Front …

[He] took the French presidency in 2007 on the promise of bold reform. He failed to win re-election in 2012 having lost his nerve and after achieving little. Throwing rhetorical barbs at popular scapegoats such as the EU or foreign immigrants may help him compete with Ms. Le Pen. But the question voters will ask is whether this time Mr. Sarkozy means what he says about reforming the French economy.

Earlier this week, I argued that the Nobel Peace Prize should go to nobody, “as an acknowledgment that the most notable eruptions of violence have been so grimly predictable, the result of years of individual and collective failures by governments and international institutions.” Despite that sentiment, I certainly don’t object to the Norwegian Nobel Committee’s decision to award this year’s prize to Malala Yousafzai and Kailash Satyarthi for, as the announcement put it, “their struggle against the suppression of children and young people and for the right of all children to education.”

The most surprising thing about the award may be how unsurprising it is. The last few peace prizes — particularly the ones given to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons last year, the EU in 2012, and Barack Obama in 2009 — have been unexpected curveballs. Yousafzai, by contrast, was mentioned as a strong favourite in nearly every story leading up to Friday’s prize announcement.

The 17-year-old, who was shot by the Taliban in 2012 for campaigning for girls’ education in Pakistan’s Swat Valley, has become an international household name, particularly following her high-profile speech to the United Nations last year, and has authored a best-selling memoir.

Satyarthi, a 60-year-old campaigner against child labour in India, is much less well-known. He’s known for mounting raids on factories employing children — sometimes facing down armed guards — as well as running a rehabilitation centre for liberated children, organizing the Global March Against Child Labour, and setting up a certification system to ensure that carpets are made without child labour.

While Yousafzai and Satyarthi are both admirable and inspiring figures, I think it’s worth stepping back and assessing the Nobel committee’s mission. In its early years, the Nobel Peace Prize was most often given to honour a specific accomplishment in peacemaking — a treaty drafted or a conflict ended. (This is why some individuals not exactly known for their pacifism — Yasser Arafat and Henry Kissinger to name a couple — have peace prizes.) But overall, it’s more often been given to individuals involved in the struggle against a particular pressing problem or injustice. (Think Al Gore or Aung San Suu Kyi.) This year is obviously an example of this second type of prize.

While the (somewhat inexplicable) prestige of the Nobel can certainly bring attention to worthy individuals, there’s less evidence to suggest it helps their causes. For instance, the prize given to human rights activist Liu Xiaobo in 2010 has probably made it less likely that Chinese authorities will let him out of prison.

Some also find the Western media’s fascination with Yousafzai a little troubling. When she was passed over for the prize last year, blogger and technology researcher Zeynep Tufekci argued in a widely read post that in the Malala narrative “our multi-decade involvement in Pakistan is reduced to finding a young woman we admire that we all want to take home as if to put on a shelf to adore.” Whereas, she continued, “what the world is desperately lacking, and the Nobel Committee, for once, rewarded, is the kind of boring, institutional work of peace that advances the lives of people.”

There is something irritatingly smug and condescending about some of the coverage of “the bravest girl in the world.” It was a particular low point when, on The Daily Show, Jon Stewart said “I want to adopt you” to a young woman who’s spoken very publicly about the support she’s received from her father — a pretty brave guy in his own right.

YouTubeMalala Yousafzai during her 2013 interview with Daily Show host Jon Stewart.

But that’s our problem, not hers. My guess is that someone’s who’s comfortable telling the president of the United States to his face that his military policies are fuelling terrorism isn’t going to let herself be reduced to a cuddly caricature. And in any case, it was probably wise for the Nobel committee to pair the very young global celebrity with a relatively unheralded activist with years of work behind him.

The committee gave its last two awards to institutions — the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons and the European Union — and not particularly popular ones at that. In a year in which governments and international institutions seemed particularly ineffectual in dealing with mounting violence and instability, giving the award to individuals seems appropriate. Dividing the peace prize between an Indian and a Pakistani also seems like a deliberate statement at a time when tensions are once again escalating between the perennial adversaries.

So, congratulations to the Nobel committee: If you were going to give the award to someone, you could have done a lot worse.

All of the usual responses quickly occurred after the Scottish referendum last week: The defeated separatists, although their leader announced his retirement from politics, claimed that they represented the forces of history and that having got from a standing start to 45% on their first try, they would cross the finish line next time. Equally on cue, the unionists, led by the UK prime minister, David Cameron, announced a vast but unspecific devolution of powers to the provinces — England, Wales and Northern Ireland, as well as Scotland, all at the expense of the Mother of Parliaments, which has ruled a unitary state since, at the latest, the shambles of the American Revolution. And other separatists in other countries claimed to draw strength from the Scottish test, and to be part of the inexorable march of history toward the fragmentation of implicitly oppressive federal bundlings of ethnic and national groups.

All these normal reactions are tosh. Separatist movements do not necessarily become stronger after their first referendary test. Publics age and become more conservative; bold ideas seem less temptingly adventurous after their initial try-on. The unionists or federalists tend to know better how to parry the separatist argument after its initial airing (though this was not the case in Canada in 1995, when the Quebec nationalists were angered by the failure of the Meech Lake and Charlottetown Accords).

The well-respected polling of Lord Ashcroft revealed a few days after the Scottish referendum that the biggest factor in the negative majority, almost half of those who voted no, was unease about the complexities and uncertainties of the whole idea, especially the currency, membership in the European Union, the economy, jobs, pensions and prices. These are all relatively clear subjects in the present constitutional framework, but new members of the EU have to take the Euro, which could prove much less satisfactory to the Scots than the pound, and anyone, including the UK, could veto a Scottish EU application. A new country, largely populated by Scots who have long since become addicts to benefits generated and paid by the English, may consider Scottish independence a grand project when waxing in after-dinner sagacity fuelled by a generous helping of the admirable local whiskey, but much of it is a shot in the dark, so why risk it?

The other main reasons for no votes were “a strong attachment to the UK and its shared history, culture and traditions;” and even fewer were those who would be satisfied with “extra powers for the Scottish Parliament together with the security of remaining part of the UK.”

The panicky post-referendum effort of the British prime minister, abetted by the leader of the opposition, Labour’s Ed Miliband, and the coalition partner, Liberal Democratic leader Nick Clegg, to make over British constitutional arrangements of centuries in favour of regional empowerments before next spring’s election will not pass the Parliament that it is proposed to emasculate, and will be deemed unacceptable by those Scots who have been trying for full independence. Michael Ashcroft effectively exposed the fallacy of the Cameron-Miliband-Clegg reaction even as it was being revealed by the ill-assured prime minister. Devolving powers is the less frightening and more gradualist route to independence, and has been the specialty of the Quebec separatists. They wrote two consecutive trick questions designed to formulate the joys of independence while retaining the tangible comforts and security of continuing to snuggle in Canada and receiving $2,000 per capita annually from English Canada, a fact that Pierre Trudeau, Brian Mulroney, and Jean Chretien never wished to reveal, presumably from fear of an English-Canadian backlash.

Thus do post-vote incongruities precipitate themselves: Cameron, the winner, panics in synchronization with the other unionist party leaders and offers to abandon much of what has just been vindicated. The Scottish separatist leader, Alex Salmond, claims to be on an inexorable march to the victory of his cause, but resigns anyway, in the higher interests of “a dream that will never die.” Perhaps not, but it won’t win either. And the hopeful groupies from other separatist movements, such as in Quebec and Catalonia, claim some impending victory for themselves in the defeat in Scotland of the option they favour for themselves.

In countries where European statesmen in their distant chancelleries drew lines on maps that bore no relation to ethnic, cultural, or economic facts on the ground, as in the Middle East and much of Africa, separation is not hard to sell to aggrieved groups such as Iraqi Kurds, Shiities and Sunnis, Syrian Alawites, Palestinians, or in Africa, where there has been or is terrible civil (usually tribal) strife in Rwanda, Sudan, Libya, Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Congo, Liberia, Ivory Coast, Central African Republic, Mozambique, Angola, Zimbabwe and South Africa. Nor is it necessarily complicated to sell detachment to components of states or federations recently and rather arbitrarily assembled, such as the former Czechoslovakia, the former Yugoslavia or Malaysia (Singapore).

Related

Even in older national agglomerations, where processes were not democratic and the union was neither voluntary nor equitably nurtured, such as the Soviet Union, much of Ireland, and Sweden’s overlordship of Norway, and possibly even Catalonia as a province of Spain, independence can be sold as a concept to dissentient regions. But where there is democratic rule, centuries of adherence, and a conscientious effort to meet regional grievances, as in Scotland and Quebec, it becomes much more difficult. Many of the locals have assimilated; many profit from the union or federation, and the rest may have much to lose, with only national pride and exaltation of soul to replace it.

Only Salmond’s wild exaggeration of North Sea oil reserves and of the share of them that would belong rightfully to Scotland, which only has about 8% of the UK’s population, made a serious contest possible. Here in Canada, freakish historical circumstances, a second trick question, and Jean Chrétien’s mismanagement gave the separatists a second try in 1995, just as Cameron’s mismanagement and over-confidence made it somewhat close in Scotland. But the UK and Canada are liberal democracies with generous fiscal and social-services equalization schemes, and are not now the sort of country that regions secede from.

The rag-tag of Quebec separatists in Scotland last week claiming that their prospects had been reinvigorated by events there were just suffering out-of-body hallucinations. Dead pigeons don’t fly.

In Aberdeenshire, over 87% of people voted in Scotland’s independence referendum; in Clackmannanshire, the number was above 88%; in the Western Isles, it was close to 90%. One remote Highland peninsula actually achieved a 100% turnout — meaning that all 98 residents showed up to vote.

Overall, the number of Scots participating was an astonishing 84.6%, more than 20 percentage points higher than at the last British general election. For a referendum that wasn’t supposed to be interesting, that wasn’t taken seriously in London, that wasn’t even much covered by the British media until the last few, frantic weeks, these are extraordinary numbers. In the end, the Kingdom remains United, Scotland will stay inside Britain, and that particular question is settled for a generation. But the turnout is a warning that beneath the surface, the political earth is moving, in Britain as everywhere else in Europe.

Supposedly, electorates across the continent were becoming apathetic, apolitical. It turns out that Europeans can be galvanized by politics, as long as politics offers something deeper: not a choice between marginally higher or lower taxes, not a debate about incremental changes to the welfare state but rather an existential choice, a debate about identity and a chance to overturn the establishment. The U.S. has a long history of anti-Washington rhetoric, but this is really the first time we’ve heard anti-Westminster rhetoric of such power in the U.K.: against the Conservatives, against the Labour Party, and above all against London, a city that appears, from the perspective of the Highlands, to be controlled by unaccountable bankers and foreign oligarchs.

Most people date modern Scottish nationalism back to the days of Margaret Thatcher. But like Europe’s other anti-establishment movements, this one picked up speed thanks to the financial crisis of 2009, when Britain, like the rest of Europe, was suddenly hit by a financial hurricane that seemed to come from somewhere far away. Unpopular economic decisions made at the time were blamed on forces beyond Britain’s control. The Scottish Yes campaign grew out of a popular demand to bring those forces back under control, to make decisions locally — and to defy the iron logic of global markets. At its utopian worst, the Scottish independence movement seemed to be promising more social spending without higher taxes, as if Scots could start from scratch and create a “better” country without paying any price for separation at all.

Still, these promises are mild compared to what the other anti-establishment parties of Europe are offering. With the exception of the Catalans, most of them don’t call for independence, but rather for national renewal as well as national control: of economics, of borders, of fate. Sometimes this takes the form of anti-immigration rhetoric, sometimes it’s anti-European Union or just anti-Germany. Most of them are on the political right: France’s National Front, Austria’s Freedom Party, Hungary’s Jobbik, Britain’s U.K. Independence Party. Some of them are essentially anarchists, like the Italian party formed by the comedian Beppe Grillo. A few lie on the far left, but they are tied together by a political style that favours politically incorrect rhetoric, theatrical demonstrations, flags and sometimes music. In Scotland, it was bagpipes. In Hungary, the anti-establishment tunes are sung to the strains of heavy metal.

They are also linked by a dislike of their respective national elites. European voters have long been bored by the endless trade-offs between the centre-left and the centre-right — and in some countries decades of centre-left-right coalitions — and since the financial crisis seem to have lost faith in all of them. The ideals of European unity that inspired a previous generation don’t move younger people who have no memory of what came before. At the same time, it is increasingly and notably strange that the wealthiest group of nations on earth cannot create a policy to cope with the chaos rising on its southern and eastern borders — chaos that is of course the source of massive new immigration, as well as economic instability. Instead, distant EU institutions appear to fill their time making petty regulations. No wonder voters want to bring the decision-making “home.”

Related

Some of the charges are unfair. Hated austerity policies were in fact forced upon many countries by their own past profligacy, not by “Europe.” It is also true that, as in Scotland, many of these new parties are inspired by unrealistic, backward-looking fantasies of separation, whether from Europe, from global markets, or from the world. But even if they are unfair or unrealistic, these are the passions that now move people. The political energy does not favor the status quo. Surely there are more earthquakes to come.

A year ago, the country was set to ratify a groundbreaking pact with the European Union, opening Ukraine up to increased trade and investment with Western business partners, and possibly setting the stage for full-blown EU membership. Then the country’s President, Viktor Yanukovych, suddenly scuttled the deal, following ominous complaints from his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, who would prefer to keep Ukraine — or at least large parts of it — in Russia’s orbit.

Mr. Yanukovych’s volte-face precipitated violence and political chaos, as Western-friendly Ukrainians took to the streets of Kyiv to protest the backsliding. Mr. Yanukovych eventually fled in February. To this day, he still calls himself “the legitimate head of the Ukrainian state elected in a free vote by Ukrainian citizens.” And it is true that his ouster was not accompanied by the required constitutional niceties. But having made himself massively unpopular, and brought his country to the verge of civil war, most Ukrainians feel he got what he deserved.

Had the narrative ended there, it would have provided the West with the neat fairy-tale ending we like when “Western-oriented reformers,” as they typically are described, take the fight to autocrats and their proxies. But an insurgency rose up in Ukraine’s Russian-friendly south-eastern region, including in Crimea, which soon was occupied by Russian troops operating under a variety of shifting, cynical pretexts — until Russia simply annexed Crimea outright in March.

When the West did little in response, Russia continued to stir up separatists in heavily pro-Russian regions north of the Sea of Azov, Donetsk and Luhansk. The insurgency also has ranged further west, suggesting the possibility that Mr. Putin was trying to create what would eventually become a Russian land corridor to Crimea, thereby carving off the entire southeastern strip of Ukraine. Territorial aggression on this scale likely would have roused NATO, even in its present state, to some sort of action. The prospect of war with Russia suddenly did not seem like such a distant prospect.

At the height of the confrontation, several weeks ago, Mr. Putin even started dropping Dr. Strangelovian remarks about nuclear weapons. Washington Post columnist Anne Applebaum, generally an expert and sober observer of east European affairs, wondered aloud whether Ukrainians should prepare themselves for “total war,” and compared the pronouncements of Russian nationalists to the contents of Mein Kampf.

She wasn’t alone. All over the Western media, in columns written by conservative columnists, it was 1938, and eastern Ukraine was the Sudetenland. (And Barack Obama was Neville Chamberlain.)

Until, somewhat abruptly, it wasn’t. (And he wasn’t.) On Sept. 5, Ukraine’s government and the insurgents entered a Russian-approved ceasefire deal that, despite scattered violence, generally appears to be holding. Most Russian troops have left the country. And Mr. Putin, perhaps chastened by the sanctions the West has imposed, seems to have stepped back from the reckless bluster.

Related

This week, the Ukrainian Parliament passed legislation that ratifies the very same pact that Viktor Yanukovych rejected in late 2013. In some ways, the move is symbolic: Many of the most important trade provisions have been put off, in order to allay Russian fears of flooding the region with cheap goods. But the gesture clearly shows that Ukraine — the 90-plus percent of it that isn’t either occupied by the Russians or allied insurgents, at any rate — is moving toward the open democratic model of the West.

President Petro Poroshenko may be looking for a strategy to cut his losses with dignity

In the same breath, Ukraine’s Parliament also passed laws that would provide autonomy for Donetsk and Luhansk, a concession that seems redundant since the areas now are largely outside government control anyway. By giving in partially to insurgents’ demands that they be free of Kyiv’s laws, it also is a gesture that bespeaks weakness. Many lawmakers presumably know that these areas never will be fully brought back into Ukraine’s national fold — and so the legislation may well become part of a dénouement that eventually ends with the regions either becoming independent or joining Russia. President Petro Poroshenko may be looking for a strategy to cut his losses with dignity.

Given its division between east and west, Ukraine may always have been destined for this sort of post-Cold War breakup — though this does not excuse Russia’s cynical exploitation of the internal conflict to gobble up territory. One hopes that conflict is at its end, and that Ukraine can now get on with the important business of bringing its economy and political culture into line with those of a peaceful Europe.

SAINT-NAZAIRE, France — David Cameron is a hypocrite to demand France cancel a deal to build warships for Russia while London remains a haven for oligarchs, the head of the country’s ruling Socialist party said Tuesday.

President François Hollande is right to push ahead with the first delivery later this year, whatever the British prime minister thinks, added Jean-Christophe Cambadélis.

In Saint-Nazaire, western France, where the grey bulk of the Vladivostok towered over the dockside, most took a similar view.

With thousands of jobs dependent on its shipyards, few harboured qualms about the €1.2-billion ($1.7-billion) contract for the Vladivostok and its sister ship, the Sevastopol.

The owner of Le Ralliement, a café patronized by shipyard workers a few hundred metres from where the Vladivostok is docked, bristled with anger at Mr. Cameron and Barack Obama, the U.S. president.

“Obama should get off our case and concentrate on solving America’s problems,” said the burly 62-year-old, who declined to be named.

Thumping his hands on the bar for emphasis, he added, “As for Cameron, he should stop being the voice of his master and obediently repeating everything Obama says. If he wants to be heard in Europe, he should act as if he’s part of it.”

JEAN-SEBASTIEN EVRARD/AFP/Getty ImagesA photo taken on May 9, 2014 in Saint-Nazaire, western France, shows the Vladivostok warship, a Mistral class LHD amphibious vessel ordered by Russia to the STX France shipyard.

He stroked his moustache before going on, “The British should have been kicked out of the European Union when they chose not to take the euro like everyone else. And that soft president of ours hasn’t got the guts to stand up to anyone.”

Asked if it was morally justifiable to sell sophisticated warships to Russia after the downing of Flight MH17 by a missile which Washington says was fired from an area in eastern Ukraine held by pro-Moscow rebels, the café owner replied, “If we don’t sell ships to them, someone else will.”

Around the port, used by the Nazis as a submarine base in the Second World War, many shared his opinion, even if they expressed it less vehemently.

Marie-Lan Nguyen/WikipediaJean-Christophe Cambadélis

Stephane Gohaud, a 46-year-old taxi driver, described the MH17 disaster as “horrifying and tragic”, but added, “[The plane] should never have flown over a war zone. I don’t believe the Russians wanted it to be shot. It was a horrible mistake.”

In Paris, Mr. Cambadélis defended the decision to push ahead with delivery of the Vladivostok, due in October.

Mr. Hollande has said delivery of the second ship will depend on Russia’s attitude.

“Hollande is not backing down,” Mr. Cambadélis said, a day after Mr. Cameron said it would be “unthinkable” for Britain to fulfil such an order.

“This is a false debate led by hypocrites … When you see how many [Russian] oligarchs have sought refuge in London, David Cameron should start by cleaning up his own back yard.”

In few places is the trade-off between business and sanctions quite as stark or direct as it is here.

Like many shipbuilding centres, Saint-Nazaire has fallen on hard times. The unemployment rate is around 14%. In 2009, the main shipbuilder, STX France, put half the shipyard’s 2,500 employees on reduced hours, forcing them to take partial unemployment benefits.

SERGEI SUPINSKY/AFP/Getty ImagesUkrainians protest on July 14, 2014 in front of the French ambassador's residence in Kyev against the sale of warships to Russia.

About 400 Russian sailors are spending three months in the town training to operate the helicopter carriers.

They can be seen strolling downtown. Shopkeepers, who have been armed with a glossary of Russian phrases by the chamber of commerce, said there were always Russian sailors at the open-air market on Sunday morning. Some have been joined by their partners for the summer holidays.

Two tanned sailors walking near the beach with their wives said they did not understand why Russia was being blamed.

“We did not attack this plane,” said one, who gave his name as Arkady. “There must be an investigation before the Americans can say it was our fault.”

BRUSSELS — The European Union threatened Russia on Tuesday with harsher sanctions over Ukraine, but failed to act on a call for an arms embargo as a rift with historic overtones emerged in which Britain and Lithuania accused France of pursuing a policy akin to its 1930s appeasement of Nazi Germany.

The EU agreed to impose visa bans and asset freezes on more Russian officials, but drew back from imposing punitive measures for the first time on entire sectors of Russia’s economy.

Dutch Foreign Minister Frans Timmermans said the EU ministers instead asked the 28-nation bloc’s executive arm to study more sweeping sanctions — including targeting the arms, energy and financial sectors — if Russia fails to back down from destabilizing Ukraine.

In 1930s, Nazism wasn’t stopped, and now aggressive Russian chauvinism isn’t stopped and that resulted in the attack against a civilian plane

Timmermans opened the meeting after a minute’s silence was held in memory of the 298 people – 193 of them Dutch – who died when flight MH17 crashed last Thursday en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur.

Several ministers called for an arms embargo on Russia to try to stem a flow of weapons that is fuelling the conflict, including surface-to-air missiles suspected of bringing down the airliner.

AP Photo/Yves LoggheDutch Foreign Minister Frans Timmermans, right, receives condolences from Italy's Foreign Minister Federica Mogherini — a majority of the 298 people on board of the downed Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 were Dutch citizens — during the EU foreign ministers council at the European Council building in Brussels, Tuesday, July 22, 2014.

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In his strongest intervention since the deaths of 298 people on Flight MH17, U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron compared Russia’s aggression in Ukraine to that of Nazi Germany.

“President Putin faces a clear choice in how he decides to respond to this appalling tragedy,” Cameron said on Monday. “I hope he will use this moment to find a path out of this festering and dangerous crisis by ending Russia’s support for the separatists.

“If he does not change his approach to Ukraine in this, then Europe and the West must fundamentally change our approach to Russia. Those of us in Europe should not need to be reminded of the consequences of turning a blind eye when big countries bully smaller countries.”

Calling on European countries to halt all arms sales to Russia, Cameron singled out France and said it should be “unthinkable” for it to fulfil an order for Mistral warships from Mr Putin’s military commanders.

AP Photo / Geert Vanden WijngaertLithuania's President Dalia Grybauskaite on July 22, 2014, accused France of pursuing a policy akin to the 1930s appeasement of Nazi Germany over its decision to go ahead with the delivery of a warship to Moscow.

The president of the former Soviet republic of Lithuania, now an EU member, on Tuesday similarly accused France of pursuing a policy akin to the 1930s appeasement of Nazi Germany over its decision to go ahead with the delivery of warship to Moscow.

“If European states keep on acting so indecisively, this is a direct invitation for the aggressor to be more aggressive and go further,” Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite told LRT public radio.
“In 1930s, Nazism wasn’t stopped, and now aggressive Russian chauvinism isn’t stopped and that resulted in the attack against a civilian plane.”

But French President Francois Hollande said delivery of the first French helicopter carrier built for Russia would go ahead and the handover of a second Mistral-class warship under a US$1.62 billion contract signed in 2011 by his predecessor would depend on Russia’s attitude.

Hollande won support among both his own Socialists and the conservative opposition UMP for standing up to outside pressure. Socialist Party leader Jean-Christophe Cambadelis said Cameron should “start by cleaning up his own backyard”, referring to the presence of Russian oligarchs close to Putin in London.

Cameron’s spokesman said Britain was ready to consider sanctions that would affect its own interests, notably in financial services.

But when asked about the prime minister’s comment that it was time to target “cronies and oligarchs” around Putin, the spokesman said he had seen little evidence that London-based Russian tycoons were involved in supporting the Ukraine rebels.

Timmermans said the Netherlands, which until now has been hesitant about imposing tougher measures on Moscow, was not opposed to further sanctions.

AP Photo / Etienne LaurentFrench President Francois Hollande, center, looks on during a lunch with Spain's King Philippe VI and Queen Letizia at the Elysee Palace in Paris, Tuesday, July 22 2014 in Paris. Hollande But French President Francois Hollande said delivery of the first French helicopter carrier built for Russia would go ahead under a US$1.62 billion contract signed in 2011.

“There is no Dutch blockade of further sanctions. The Netherlands wants that the European Union makes a united, and also strong, clear, statement against the unrest in eastern Ukraine,” he told reporters.

Any decision to move to tough economic sanctions, including restricting access to capital markets, would require a summit of EU leaders, diplomats said.

The next summit is not due until Aug. 30 although heads of state and government could be convened earlier if there is agreement.

In a step apparently designed to embarrass Russia, Britain’s interior ministry announced a decision to hold a public inquiry into the death of former KGB spy Alexander Litvinenko, who died of radioactive polonium poisoning in London in 2006.

Litvinenko blamed Russian President Vladimir Putin on his deathbed for ordering his killing. Moscow denied any involvement. Britain had rejected a request for an inquest last year when relations with Russia were warmer.

A billion-dollar European effort to model the human brain in a supercomputer is in danger of collapsing amid skepticism this is even possible.

Not even a year after it was launched by the European Union, the Human Brain Project is the target of an open letter from neuroscientists, saying it is “not on course” due to “substantial failures” including a “overly narrow” focus on the dream of its founder, who has long tried to build a digital brain.

Delivered to EU funders this week, the letter threatened a scientific boycott unless the project is immediately and independently reviewed.

“We strongly question whether the goals and implementation of the HBP are adequate to form the nucleus of the collaborative effort in Europe that will further our understanding of the brain,” reads the letter, which as of Tuesday had the signatures of nearly 400 neuroscientists, mainly European, including two from Canada.

At issue is the idea of recreating a brain, neuron by neuron, in a powerful computer, and then seeing if it behaves like a real brain, the most complex object known to science.

It is the leading example of what is known as “in silico” neuroscience, which has risen in prominence along with computing power, despite philosophical concerns that brains cannot be reduced to the ones and zeroes of digital computation.

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Now critics are complaining the Human Brain Project was pitched as neuroscience, but is in fact a computing enterprise, almost a vanity project, with no hope of probing the real mysteries of consciousness and cognition.

The HBP has been “controversial and divisive,” the letter says, and many labs refused to join “because of its focus on an overly narrow approach, leading to a significant risk that it would fail to meet its goals.”

Last month, a proposal for its second round of pledged funding — roughly 50-million euros per year for the main project, and the same for partnerships, with an estimated 10-year total over 1-billion euros — “reflected an even further narrowing of goals and funding allocation, including the removal of an entire neuroscience subproject and the consequent deletion of 18 additional laboratories.”

As a major government investment in frontier research, the HBP is similar to U.S. President Barack Obama’s BRAIN Initiative, for Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies. A key difference is that the American work is being done in the traditional model, by many small teams that occasionally collaborate.

In Europe, on the other hand, the HBP is overseen by a single charismatic visionary, Henry Markram, of the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland.

In interviews about the letter, he was defensive, and said a “paradigm shift” is underway that threatens old academic orders, similar to the rise of the human genome project.

“I think we need to communicate more that it’s going to actually help them get more funding,” Prof. Markram told the Associated Press. “They feel that money is being taken away, that it’s going to distract from the important work that they’re doing. There is really not a threat.”

Before it was even chosen for the funding, in 2012, a leading University of Toronto researcher was deeply critical of the Human Brain Project, and said most informed people think it is “crazy.”

“I deeply don’t believe in this [EU Human Brain] project. I think putting a lot of money into understanding how the brain works is an excellent idea. I don’t think that pouring it into a project that most people in the field think is crazy is the right thing to do,” said Geoffrey Hinton, then an expert in machine learning at the University of Toronto, now employed by Google. “This is a project dressed up to get flagship money…. I’ve never met anybody who thought it was a good idea. I’ve met lots of people who think it is a terrible idea… The real problem with that project is they have no clue how to get a large system like that to learn.”

It is not the only digital brain. In Toronto, for example, a team at Baycrest’s Rotman Research Institute has built a Virtual Brain, which aims to recreate the structure and function of grey matter, including its “plasticity,” or its capacity to reorganize after damage.

Another, called SPAUN, was created by Chris Eliasmith, Canada Research Chair in Theoretical Neuroscience at the University of Waterloo, and has replicated human brain behaviour such as counting, pattern recognition and learning by reinforcement, albeit at a much slower pace than a real brain.

National Post

AP Photo/Keystone/Laurent GillieronIn this May 9, 2011 file picture people use a infrared-DIC microscopy to do multi-neuron patch-clamp recording in the Blue Brain team and the Human Brain Project (HBP) laboratory of the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL), in Lausanne, Switzerland.

When the dyspeptic poet Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867), who loathed Belgium even more than most things, was asked to imagine an epitaph for that nation, he suggested: “At last!” Which is how many Europeans feel about the rapidly growing disgust with the European Union, which is headquartered in Brussels.

Opposition to the EU is a worthy cause that unfortunately has been embraced by, and might become the property of, political parties tainted by disreputable motives and members. That xenophobia, anti-Semitism and other acrid aromas of Europe’s past are today present in corners of the continent is an indictment of the EU’s — and of Europe’s major parties’ — disregard of the legitimate concerns of decent people dismayed by the damage the EU is doing to democracy and freedom.

In last month’s elections for the European Parliament — a misbegotten institution that presumes a common European political culture but has 24 official languages — parties frequently dismissed as “fringe” groups performed impressively in France, Britain, Austria, Denmark and Greece by stressing hostility to the EU. They express, among other things, resentment of the “pooling” of national sovereignties in EU institutions, and the “harmonization” of national policies by bureaucracies in Brussels, all of which diminish the rights of national parliaments, won over centuries.

Greece’s Golden Dawn party (9.4% of Greece’s vote), whose symbol suggests the swastika, and Hungary’s unambiguously anti-Semitic Jobbik party (14.7%) are parties with fascist fragrances. In France, Marine Le Pen’s National Front won, but has attracted enough disagreeable adherents to cause Nigel Farage, leader of the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP), to rule out alignment with it.

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Europhiles may think these parties will, like bees, sting and then die. But although UKIP has no seat in the House of Commons, it won more British seats in the European parliamentary elections than either Labour or the governing Conservatives (who finished third), the first time this has happened in any British national election in 103 years. New York Times columnist Roger Cohen notes that France’s Le Monde newspaper says Le Pen’s National Front won 43% of workers’ votes and 37% of the unemployed’s (the youth unemployment rate is 23.2%). With Le Pen having won 25% of the vote to the two major parties’ 20.8% and 14% (for the governing socialists), Cohen says “a two-party system is now a three-party system” and “make no mistake, she could become president.” The presidential election is in 2017.

One hundred summers ago, Europe stumbled into the first of two wars from which it emerged terrified of itself. Having misdiagnosed nationalism as the cause of Europe’s sufferings (Hitler was a racialist, not a nationalist; he did not become a German citizen until the year before becoming Germany’s chancellor), European leaders undertook the steady attenuation of nationhood. They have thereby eroded the basis of government by consent — the powers of national parliaments.

The assumption was that if the European could be made into homo economicus, a purely economic creature, he would accept an increasingly closer union of decreasingly sovereign nations as a price cheerfully paid for economic dynamism. But the draining away of the powers of parliaments by Brussels’ supranational bureaucracy now coincides with continental stagnation.

America’s tea party impulse — a recoil against the promiscuous growth of government — could have fuelled a third party, but a major party has managed to accommodate it

Now everything from cheeses to condoms is regulated. The German word for all this is “Gleichschaltung,” meaning to bring everything and everybody into co-operation, or at least conformity; the French word is “dirigisme,” from diriger, to direct. The English word is bossiness.

In 1988, in Bruges, Belgium, near Brussels, an unapologetic British nationalist denounced efforts to “suppress nationhood and concentrate power at the centre of a European conglomerate.” Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher continued: “We have not successfully rolled back the frontiers of the state in Britain, only to see them re-imposed at a European level.”

America’s tea party impulse — a recoil against the promiscuous growth of government — could have fuelled a third party, but a major party has managed to accommodate it. If Britain’s Conservative Party had remained Thatcherite, or if a major French party had espoused Charles de Gaulle’s vision of “a Europe of nations,” the sensible anxieties of millions of Europeans about Europe’s intensifying statism and disparagement of nationhood could have been channeled into more mainstream parties. Instead, it has fallen to minor parties to insist: What more than a millennium of distinct national evolutions have put asunder, the EU should not presume to put together.

A stalled or scuttled deal would be politically damaging to Harper, who views a comprehensive deal with the EU’s 28-country bloc to be the jewel in his crown of a series of much smaller trade agreements.

Aides to Harper, who spoke on the condition of anonymity earlier in the week, had played down any suggestion that Harper might piggyback on the G7 summit to push the trade deal.

Sources suggested that it was unlikely that Harper and Barroso would talk trade in Brussels, even though both leaders would see each other at the G7 meeting.

But that changed Wednesday evening as Harper was seen entering the main G7 summit building in rainy downtown Brussels a full hour before his scheduled official arrival.

ALAIN JOCARD/AFP/Getty ImagesLeft to right: U.S. President Barack Obama, President of the European Council Herman van Rompuy, Head of the European Commission Jose Manuel Barroso, France's President Francois Hollande, Canada's Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Italy's Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, Britain's Prime Minister David Cameron and Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel attend a working dinner at the G7 summit at the European Council headquarters on June 4, 2014 in Brussels.

Harper moved quickly to a small seventh-floor room in the summit building, where a crush of cameras converged on him and Barroso seated before their respective flags.

Both leaders grinned broadly and stood for several seconds shaking hands and looking directly at the throng of cameras without speaking.

Harper and Barroso struck up a strong personal rapport last fall in the weeks leading up to their October announcement, apparently breaking the logjam after four years of stalled talks. At the October signing ceremony, Barroso praised Harper as a skilled negotiator, giving him political cover.

However, the political ground is shifting significantly in Europe since Harper was last here in October, and if the final legal text of the deal doesn’t come soon, the prime minister could face a cast of less trade-friendly characters.

We will work with whoever is in the role

Not only is the EU now focusing on a new, separate round of free trade negotiations with the United States, which means there’s less attention on Canada, but the May 25 elections in the European parliament brought victories to parties on the far right and far left that are less than friendly towards economic integration.

The influential German magazine Der Spiegel reported this past week that the president of tiny Luxembourg is vying to succeed Barroso later this year for the EU presidency — and he is reportedly not a fan of trade liberalization.

Earlier this week, Harper’s office would offer only a guarded assessment of how Europe’s shifting politics could affect the deal.

“Regarding the EU presidency, that’s an issue for the EU’s member countries to address if they feel it necessary,” an aide to Harper said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to discuss the matter publicly.

“We will work with whoever is in the role to further our common interests.”

Last month, EU Trade Commissioner Karel De Gucht said the final technical discussions “have proven to be more difficult than originally foreseen.”